


Passing the Way (Song Sliced in Twain)

by regala_electra



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-14
Updated: 2007-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regala_electra/pseuds/regala_electra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Wolf strikes unexpectedly, as always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing the Way (Song Sliced in Twain)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://remix-redux.livejournal.com/42034.html).

This is the taste of nothing on her lips (she has no lips and has not ever experienced a thing called taste). Her heart was opened once (and it opens always). It will open. Time can be cruel.

There is nothing easy here, no salvation spared for the greater good and no memorial for the heroic lost. There is only silence in infinity. This is time. The Wolf strikes unexpectedly, as always.

She can tell you this because she’s been here for so long that all she has left are stories in between the adventures. Nothing else matters.

*

It is not a construct – time. It is everything and it hums underfoot and whispers against the minds of all things, living and static. She is more than just the peculiar sound of the universe being torn asunder all just to see something _more_.

And she sees over and over again, that this is the marriage of stasis and chaos (such unlikely weddings do merrily occur). There will be new voyages, new people (and _things_ , inanimate sometimes but still so very alive) with her Doctor.

She feels it _now_ (as much as there can be a now to her, this is all a construct, this is all the Vortex, this is nothing but words to explain it): a memory. The remembrance of burning through a frail human body (so little time and the whole of time, rushing through fragile tactile _life_ ) of all there is and all there ever will be.

The Wolf reawakening through her and through the other – the human girl who wished for _our Doctor_ – and the TARDIS does not offer magic nor the impossible, she offers all that will ever be.

Rose speaks now to Another and the TARDIS knows her now.

Time is not a vortex, it is not a circle, it is not a construct made like taffy: pliable and soft, made for childish hands to touch, to play with, to mold into better things. Time is not a toy and yet it is touched more than any amusement ever designed. Time is constant and in flux. Time is everything and yet it is not.

There are not yet enough living beings that understand this. This is what matters.

Lessons are for children, and she has no lesson but this: scars do not fade, ever; instead the wounds shall bend in time and mutate. For the greater good, a war can be ended at a price and time does not forget even when all things are stolen from it. Remember that, even though it will always be forgotten.

The girl, the one he calls _Rose_ , the one she once opened her heart to, oh, she burned so bright, is reaching out with the blinding light still prickling under her skin and yes, she has found another.

She must accompany the Wolf’s call because she is nothing without the Wolf. Its words once were scrawled on her (false) skin.

The Doctor is spoken of, the power is offered, lessons learned, passed on, these are human words: frivolous and fragile. Yes, there will be power, more than can ever be understood.

Two points of origin, both are female, soft, and human. Born and raised in London, England, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The burning seeks a new release and it does not offer death (or regeneration), it offers a chance. She is not surprised by this, by the thrum of adventure seeking purchase, she is never surprised.

These curious humans. Perhaps, like her Doctor, she has need of them.

The embrace is broken and there are words spoken, words that danced out of the Doctor’s mouth ( _so was I_ ) and for all that this is, impossible, she soaks in it, overcome in a light that not even her Doctor can explain.

It takes a second. Such things always do.

All of time and space, that is hers to explore, and yet the way across dimensions has been irrevocably severed. She reaches out for her onetime touch of the human girl but only comes away with a patina of the abyss.

The Doctor cheerfully bangs on her with one of his daft old hammers and there is a new feminine laugh after his comical gesture. _Memories_ (the TARDIS has no memories, it is just a collection of moments, something colder and stranger than emotions) and she has drifted out of time.

She is with her Doctor now and hustles onwards, backwards, sideways and perhaps a shudder-step of a zigzag, thinking that yes, this is all that ever should be. He still has far too many lessons to grasp and then let go: scattering whole planets and galaxies to the wind. He plays with black holes and dance around dying stars yet he cannot celebrate all alone.

They are Schrödinger's cats, all of them, as perhaps these humans would understand.

And she is nothing like a box.

She touches nothing – feels nothing but the lurch of time and space splintering inside her. It is through these bright fragile things (mortal creatures that shall come to dust as they always shall be) that she can sustain herself: when they touch, she trembles but a little, not enough to be noticed, to be corrected, to be hit with a mallet.

Dangerous, this, twisting upon itself and the ache called Bad Wolf, a near infection, strikes deep in her unknown anima – there is a spirit deep inside though she is godless.

Time is more than the conduit and does not need a Voice. It does not, despite Time Lord beliefs, stretch endlessly and continue past a point that they have fixed as the great reckoning. When Time has nightmares, it dreams of Before and of After (they are the same thing, the same gnawing beast). Time never sleeps. Or waits.

The TARDIS sleeps and dreams of all those who have seen it change, who have watched mutilations and indignities blossom across its façade and interiors like blooming bruises, who have admired its false veneer, _A Police Box, really?_ , they say and even then, there is something soft in the voice, a grudging respect.

There cannot be variations without stability (yes, even for her Doctor). The dangerous howl of the Wolf has called another (not into being, nothing is made of nothing and she knows all too well the price of entropy) and this new one (human, female, brilliant) has yet to be experienced (but has already happened, this has always been and never will be, this is the flux, as always).

She will know this Martha Jones, take her where trouble waits for the Doctor and in time (for it is always about _time_ ), like all the others, she will leave.

It is worth it.

*

Time does not live but it does die. Time is worse than dust, you cannot touch it. Time lies.

The Wolf has been waylaid and still it sinks in, fierce protective song of itself and it cries not anew. It is an entirely different kind of music. But when the TARDIS sings, time parts and wonders if maybe, finally, time will be found to be as false as everything else.

And she knows their joined desire, entwined, _the Doctor_ , always the Doctor, that is the unending cry and yes, she will keep him safe. Far longer than even the Doctor can ever see. This is how she lives.


End file.
